I did not have time to be weak.
The four walls of my bedroom were staring at me on that morning as if to challenge my every move. As I walked around the bed, roaming from one side to the other, I couldn’t take my eyes off a single one of them. Left. Right. North. South. I walked around that room in nothing more than my sweat pants and just tried to figure out what those walls represented and what I had to do for the day. No one would have thought I’d spent all those years and months inside a space much smaller than the one I was pacing, but I had, yet I remembered it feeling a million times bigger than the one I was currently keeping myself captive in.
Fortunately, it didn’t take me long to figure out what the difference was.
Inside, I’d kept the walls bare. There’d been nothing but gray magnolia staring back at me each and every day. I’d worked out in that cell. I’d cried, I’d slept, I’d sweat, and I’d flipped the crap out, all without judgment. I’d never had my fellow man staring down at me and I’d never had to do a stomach curl while looking into the eyes of someone I’d loved and lost.
Yet my bedroom…
It was nothing short of haunted.
His eyes were everywhere. They were on me. They were judging and they were watching. I couldn’t even slip my hand onto my hard dick on a morning without opening my lids and seeinghimstaring back at me with nothing but questions.
When are you going to make this right, Drew?
When will you be able to look at me again without feeling guilty?
You took the fall for my death. Isn’t that enough?
Will you only ever feel peace when you’re on this side of existence, right next to me?
I was sane enough to know that it wasn’t really him doing the talking. First of all, I knew more than anyone that Pete wasn’t that fucking cruel. In his eyes, I was his protégé, the one kid who he was allowed to beat but never abuse. I was the man he could taunt but never fail to support. I was his little brother in too many ways for him to spend any kind of time going out of his way to make me feel like shit. He’d wanted the best for me from day one—from the first time he slid those threadbare gloves upon my small, curled up fists and promised me a lifetime of happiness. All I had to do was learn how to take my anger out on the right equipment instead of the wrong people. I surrendered myself to him then and I was still doing it now. A part of me knew that it would always be that way between us, no matter what the future did or didn’t hold.
I wanted to run from the room and pretend none of the crap running through my head was really there. But there was something else holding me in place, forcing my feet to stay glued to the spot. My eyes had landed on the one picture of Pete and me that was about to ruin everything.
In it, Pete was fifteen. I was ten—maybe younger. Eight. Nine. I wasn’t sure. But I knew his age for a fact, which should have told me my own, yet all I could focus on were those fifteen-year-old eyes staring back at me, those god-awful denim dungarees, and that mustard yellow vest that sat beneath them.
“You gotta stop being what everyone else wants you to be, kid. You might have been created for a purpose, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a reason of your own to live,” he’d said as he slid on those gloves and kept his eyes on me like I was nothing more than a coiled spring waiting to break the hell free.
“Why you pulled me here, Pete?” I asked innocently, watching him as he raised his knee up high and planted my arm on the top of it. I couldn’t look away from him as he flipped it over and started to tie up the laces, pulling them much tighter than felt comfortable against my skin.
“To teach you how to hold your own. To teach you how to focus all that stuff you got going on in your belly into the right place.”
“You know about the stuff?”
“Sure I do.”
“You want me to fight?”
“Not unless you know it’s right.”
I stood still for a second, lifting my eyes up to him before looking around at all the big men dressed in leather that were walking around the place like they owned it. “Do I have any choice around here?”
Pete laughed roughly, pulling harder on the laces of one hand, before he switched arms and concentrated on the other. “Not really. Fighting is a way of life. Although, you got achoice as to how much you want to be able to fight. You can defend, or you can attack. Two different worlds, two sets of rules. One makes you a leader, the other makes you a follower or a protector. I guess that depends on you and what you want to be,” he said, not looking up at me as he spoke.
I loved Pete more than I loved anyone else that I could think of. I didn’t know what it was that made me think of him as anything more than he was, but I guess a big part of that was because he spoke to me like a grown up when everyone else looked at me like I was a golden egg that couldn’t be touched or cracked for at least another twenty years. All I ever wanted to do was make him proud. As someone who could look after himself more than anyone else, even though he was young, I knew my answer before I even spoke it.
“I want to be a leader,” I told him softly.
His fingers worked over the strings without much effort. He knew how to do those crisscross patterns and pull that glove tighter than anyone else. It was like he was made to always do that job. It was quick and it was easy to him, just like the smile he flashed at me as he looked up.
“Yeah? I’d like you to be a leader, too.”
“You would?” I asked, staring back up at him with wide eyes as he finished and I tapped both ends of my gloves together like I’d watched him do a thousand times before.
“I would. I think you’ve got it in you. Just don’t let anyone ever tell you what’s right and wrong, Drew. If you’re gonna be a leader, you’re always going to have to stay true to yourself and go with your gut. No matter who stands in your way. No matter who makes you question everything you think you stand for. No matter who tries to knock you on your ass. A true leader looks their enemy in the eyes and he says, ‘I’m nevergonna back down, no matter what you throw at me and no matter how beaten to the ground I am. If you want to win this fight, you’re gonna have to kill me.’ Do you get that? There’s no in between. No middle ground. No negotiations. This is do or die. A leader—a true leader—they’ll do whatever it takes to make things go their way.”
Pete’s eyes looked up into mine like they never had done before, and even though I was young, too, I knew what he was saying. He was giving me my first warning. He was showing me how dangerous my decision could be, and above all else, he was giving me my first look into club life. I tapped my gloves together a few more times before I started bouncing on the balls of my feet and gave him my biggest, most confident grin ever. Giving the air a few punches just to show him how strong I really was, I started to jab left, then right, then left again before upper cutting no one and landing on both my feet with a flourish.
